We laid many of our beloved black icons, role models and pioneers to rest in 2017. From legends such as Chuck Berry, Fats Domino and Della Reese to modern-day stars like Charlie Murphy and Prodigy; from unsung heroes like civil rights activists and black firsts to men, women and children killed by police, and to…

Long before Mustafa Santiago Ali helped establish one of our nation’s most esteemed federal programs, he was a child raised in a Baptist and Pentecostal church. He was born in a family passionate about social justice and civil rights, and his faith laid the foundation for a life of giving back.

In the United States, race is the dominant factor when it comes to living in a toxic environment because black, brown and poor people are more likely to live in polluted communities with contaminated water, dirty air and toxic waste.

Editor’s note: For Black History Month,The Rootis speaking to the relatives of our most cherished African-American heroes in a series called Living With History. To open the series, we interviewed a descendant of Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington. Today we feature Michelle and Daniel Duster, the…

Editor’s note: For Black History Month, The Root is speaking to the relatives of our most cherished African-American heroes in a series called Living With History. Today we feature Kenneth B. Morris Jr., a descendant of abolitionist Frederick Douglass and educator Booker T. Washington, and spoke to him about how the…

The year 2016 was brutal. Remembering all of the lives we lost and putting them in a list was heavy. From Prince to Tommy Ford, Maurice White, Afeni Shakur, Phife Dawg, Gwen Ifill, Muhammad Ali and too many other names to mention, the black community took countless L’s this year.

Tomorrow marks two weeks since more than 60 million Americans elected Donald Trump president of the United States, unleashing a wave of hate crimes and harassment against people of color across the country. The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that there have been 701 incidents of racial harassment since Election…

Thanks to the efforts of the Black Lives Matter movement and a seemingly never-ending stream of disturbing videos, police brutality was one of the biggest news stories of 2015. A Washington Post investigation found that last year, at least 980 people were shot and killed by police. One in 10 was unarmed, and a…

It has been a year since 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by then-Ferguson, Mo., Police Officer Darren Wilson. The teenager’s death on Aug. 9, 2014, sparked an uprising that helped put #BlackLivesMatter—which was created after the 2012 death of Trayvon Martin—into the national spotlight.

St. Louis, Sat., Oct. 11: It’s been nine weeks since unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown was killed by police Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Mo. And for those in this majority-African-American municipality, as well as many citizens of the surrounding St. Louis metro area, Brown’s shooting, the hourslong delay after…